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Federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott has said that he is more interested in an empowered community than in an empowered government.

Speaking at a forum in Melbourne, Abbott said that communities will be stronger if they invest more of their own time and money into local services such as schools and hospitals.

“We don’t necessarily want government to do less for people but we certainly want people to have the capacity to do more for themselves because that’s the way that stronger communities are built,” he said.

“The risk when governments tackle problems that are best addressed in the community is that people are denied that chance to achieve something for themselves.”

He said that parents who are better at combining family and career are more likely to be personally fulfilled and ultimately to be more effective parents. He also said that welfare recipients working for the dole have more self-respect than those who are getting something for nothing.

“The next Coalition government will work closely with the states to try to ensure that public schools and public hospitals are locally-run rather than controlled by distant bureaucracies. Our objective is not a Commonwealth takeover of public hospitals because, as John Howard frequently pointed out, Canberra public servants might be no better at running hospitals than their state counter-parts,” Abbott said.

“Empowering local communities would allow hospitals and schools to make more of the government funding that they currently receive. It would liberate schools and hospitals to do more themselves rather than simply look to government for the resources they want.

“We want the institutions that matter most to people to be more effective and responsive. We want individuals and communities more often to come closer to being their best selves.”

3 Comments

It seems every pic I see of Tony Abbott is showing him with hand on heart. This time it is the tried and true right-wing position of downsizing government support, in the name of “the community knows best”. Which is obviously displaying an ignorance of how community works. As long as communities lack capacity-building they are not going to be empowered. Please note also that communities have a wider frame of reference than schools and hospitals!

the risk Mr Abbott is the overburden of regulation that Governments (Howard / Costello, Bracks) introduced and placed on Not for Profits. This shows no sign of abating. If you really believed in empowering communities you would design around individuals and community not Government & Business needs. Words are cheap…..where is your action on OH & S legislation, strengthening and Nationalisation of Good Samaritan Acts and real action on public liability to provide protection and coverage for communities at reasonable cost.

Lawyers, risk management professionals and Govt regulation are strangling Not For Profits and Communities and even if they can comply it sucks up millions of $ in attempts to achieve the compliance

awombatwho you are dead right. I’m the CEO of a medium size NFP in the NT and the compliance burden is enormous. However, let’s not fall into the trap of making this a partisan issue: the compliance burden has been growing steadily over at least the last couple of decades. Yes it does include compliance introduced by the Howard Govt but the WHS, and Fair Work legislation is Labor’s, and some of the imperative has come from the courts (eg the Centro case).

What we are not hearing from Mr Abbott or his shadow Minister is anything substantive about policies for the NFP sector. This despite the fact that it now constitutes around 5% of GDP.